Tag: tips
Dos and Don’ts of Using Social Media to Grow Your Business
Are you using social media to grow your business? What challenges are you facing? A few weeks ago, I spoke on a panel on “Using Social Media: The Dos and Don’ts to Grow Your Business” for the Organizational Development Network of Long Island. We talked about how social media can help and hurt your business. I’m happy to say I learned new things and got to exchange a lot of tips for how to make the most of social media marketing.
Here are my top dos and don’ts:
1. Do go where you audience is. A common question from the audience was which type of social media is the best. Well the simplest answer is to find where you audience is. If you’re targeting certain types of companies, determine where the company and its key individuals have a social media presence. Are they on LinkedIn? Twitter? Google+? Also look at how they are using each channel. Where are they the most actively engaged? Are they talking to their customers, peers, vendors or others? Yes, you can get into a more detailed analysis about which social media channel is the best, but it basically boils down to knowing your audience – where are they active and where do they look for the kind of information that you could provide to them.
2. Don’t think of social media as either a scourge or miracle cure for your business. Social media is a channel for marketing, business development and building/reinforcing relationships. It doesn’t mean you stop doing all the other things you’ve done previously; nor does it mean that you don’t try it because you’ve done okay in the past with your other tactics and don’t need to change. There was a time long, long ago when few used email marketing or had a website. Now you have both, but you are probably still incorporating networking, advertising, telemarketing and sales, direct mail, etc. Email and websites didn’t replace everything else, but you did change your marketing mix. Hopefully you’re always continuing to test and evaluate what works best for your business. And you should keep doing that as you incorporate social media into your mix.
3. Do dedicate resources to social media marketing. A lot of comments at the event centered on finding the time to deal with social media. Well, it’s like everything else you do to market your business. You have to set aside resources for it. With some types of marketing, the investment is more in terms of money (ex. advertising). Other times, it is more about time. Either way you have to make a commitment to promoting your business. With that said, look at some of the other dos and don’ts in order to help maximize your resources.
4. Don’t use it as a channel to talk about yourself. Yes, you can use it to distribute press releases or talk about your activities, new hires, etc. but just don’t do that most of the time. People want useful educational information; they are less interested in hearing about how great you are.
5. Do leverage your employees. Employees are a great resource for helping you develop the right kind of content to engage your audience. They are the ones fielding questions from clients. They probably have a lot of insights about what clients want to know about and how to craft your message. Employees can also help expand your reach by distributing your content through their own networks.
6. Don’t forget to consider legal liability. Have a social media policy covering what your employees can and can’t do. Understand rules governing advertising, copyright, trademark, trade secrets, publicity, and other problematic areas. If you’re in a regulated industry, special rules apply. You should also monitor what is being said about you for legal purposes as well as for your own reputation management.
7. Do have a plan and goals. Like all marketing (and business), social media works best when you think through who you want to target, how you’re going to reach them and set goals so you can measure how you’re doing. Otherwise you are likely to waste valuable resources.
8. Don’t try to do it all at once. Great, you believe in the value of social media and want to dive in. Even still you should start simple. Build a presence and an audience on one or two channels. Begin sharing content on a regular basis, but don’t be overly ambitious. Come up with a conservative schedule and once you’re reliably following it, then you can increase the frequency. It’s better to scale up slowly, than start with a bang and die with a whimper because you couldn’t maintain that level of activity.
Thanks to ODNLI, Paul Rubell (@www.rdtcontentmarketing.comPaulRubell) at Meltzer Lippe, Jerry Siegel at JASB Management, and a very engaged audience at the event.
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How to position yourself as an expert to attract clients – Part 2
Wouldn’t it be great to be considered an expert in your field? What better way to attract business. It’s not a mystery or out of reach for most people. There are specific actions you can take to help you become a go-to resource. We covered 5 tips already in our previous post. Here are 5 more:
6. Maximize your reach through owned, earned and paid channels. Owned distribution channels refer to channels you control – i.e. your website, blogs, social media, direct mail and email. Earned channels are public relations and media opportunities. Paid channels are advertising related, including paid search, sponsored content and other outlets. Use all these ways to get your message out.
7. Listen to and engage with your audience. Ask for feedback from clients, prospects, referral sources and other contacts. Join groups where you can become an active participant in discussions on the issues important to your audience. Their experiences will inform your thinking and also make it more likely they will stay interested in what you’re talking about.
8. Involve employees. Your employees can be a great resource for content ideas as well as help to disseminate your message. Often they are the ones that talk to clients about day to day matters – questions, complaints, etc. Ask them for input on what you should be writing/speaking about. Also employees can share your content via their own social media channels, which gets you in front of more people.
9. Use social media. Social media has a lot of great uses. First, it’s a tool for listening. Monitor what your clients, prospects, industry and media outlets are discussing. You should also look at what your competitors are doing. Social media is also a distribution outlet. Promote your content via the social media channels your target audience uses. However, remember when sharing your own content you should repurpose it for each outlet. Don’t post the same content in the same way for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other channels. Finally use social media to find key contacts. For example, you can mine LinkedIn to help you find people in your industry, influencers, groups, or potential clients.
10. Cultivate relationships with other experts, organizations, influencers and media. You are judged by the company you keep. In building relationships, it’s always better to give than to receive. Reach out to individuals and groups and help them spread their message. As you build credibility with them, opportunities may arise to work with them, or get them to share your work with their audience. With organizations, get involved in committees and look to take on a leadership position. It is a great way to stay informed on the issues and make key connections.
Hopefully these 10 tips will put you on the path to becoming a go-to resource who attracts clients. It’s not easy to position yourself as an expert, but the rewards are worth it.
How to position yourself as an expert to attract clients – Part 1
How can you be seen as an expert people turn to for help on a particular problem? In an increasingly competitive marketplace, you need to do more than say you have “years of experience” or a “proven track record.” There are specific tactics that can help you get noticed, stay top of mind, and attract and retain clients. The key to success is consistently delivering the right message to the right audience at the right time.
Here are 5 tips for positioning yourself as a go-to-resource:
1. Know your stuff. It’s almost too obvious to say, but you need to know what you’re talking about. Keep up on new developments and trends, understand your audience’s concerns, and develop your own insights instead of just regurgitating what other people say.
2. Focus on a niche. It’s a lot easier to be an expert in a very focused area. Look at where you have the most potential. Who are your best clients and what do they have in common? What is your most profitable work? Where do you have the most/least competitors? You want to carve out a specialty that will help you compete successfully. For example, there are lots of personal injury lawyers, but how many focus on motorcycles or dog bites. Many accounting firms work with small businesses, but fewer have a niche with restaurant owners or construction companies. The point is to think narrow. Don’t try to be an expert in a broad area. It won’t work.
3. Identify your unique value proposition. What skills, education, experience, or background do you have to differentiate yourself? Do you have special training or an insider/outsider perspective? Are you active in relevant organizations or have key contacts? You want to look for ways to distinguish yourself and your practice from your competitors and help highlight why you are qualified to be an expert.
4. Create and share content. Write and speak consistently. There are lots of options and ideally you should incorporate as many as possible – articles, blogs, newsletters, eBooks, white papers, infographics, video, radio, live events, webinars, PowerPoints, etc. The key is to deliver relevant content. And don’t forget you can also share other people’s content. However, make sure you add your own insights. In other words, don’t like just “like” an article. Add a comment, raise a question, or share an experience.
5. Think like a publisher. Publishers know their audience and consistently produce high-quality relevant content for that audience. It doesn’t matter whether you’re publishing content yourself or going to a third-party; the same rules apply.
In our next post, we’ll cover 5 more tips to help you become a go-to resource and attract clients.
It’s July. Do you know how your marketing is doing?
In December, we wrote about 3 reasons why you didn’t achieve your marketing goals in 2014. Well, we’re now 6 months into 2015 and it’s a good time to look at how you’re doing and make sure you’re not making the same mistakes.
So for your mid-year marketing check, ask yourself these questions:
1. How well are you targeting your audience?
Did you take the time at the beginning of the year to prioritize the markets you wanted to go after? When you really think about it, you probably have at least a few audiences you can target for your services (different industries, referral sources, etc.). It’s unlikely you have an unlimited marketing budget so that means you have to pick and choose where to spend your resources. Do some research to determine who should be your top targets for the year. And then do more research to learn about their needs and interests, how to find them, where they get their information and how they make decisions. You want to deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time.
2. Do you have specific goals and are you tracking results?
You should have very particular (and prioritized) objectives in mind that you want your marketing to help you obtain. This helps you to understand where to focus your marketing efforts and create benchmarks so you can monitor your progress. It might still be too soon to see the impact of your marketing in terms of actual new business signed this year. However, you may be seeing other indications that your message is effectively getting out to your audience. Are you seeing more web traffic, building your contact database, getting more calls, etc.? There are lots of ways to gauge progress. The first step though is setting short, mid, and long-term goals that are sufficiently specific for you to establish some way to measure improvement. Then remember that no matter how well you are doing, you should continue to track, test and revise your tactics.
3. Do you have a strategic marketing plan?
A marketing plan lets you think about your priorities and where and how you should focus your resources for the most impact. Without a plan, you run the risk of spending time and money on an assortment of different tactics without a clearly defined purpose. It also helps keep you honest and accountable. It’s too easy to start something and then let it drop. Putting it in writing reminds you that you thought it was worth investing in. You documented who you wanted to go after and why and how you would go about it. When you feel like it’s taking too long to see results or you’re tempted to spend the time and money on something else, read the plan to stay on track.
It’s July. How is your marketing doing?
12 ways to promote your e-book or white paper to bring in leads – Part 2
We all hate the prospect of giving our contact information to a new website and being hit with sales pitches. But we’ll sign-up if we believe we’re getting real value out of it. As the business trying to attract leads, you need to provide that value. You also need to get the word out so people know about the great information you’re offering. In my last post, I covered 7 ways to promote your e-book or white paper to generate leads. Here are 5 more:
8. Social media. You should repurpose your content for different social media channels and drive traffic to your website. On LinkedIn, create a short related article and publish it as a LinkedIn post with a link to your e-book. Also share it as an update with your connections as well as posting it to relevant groups. Tweet tips from the book. Use Facebook. Create an infographic for Pinterest. Turn it into a PowerPoint and post it on SlideShare. Make the most of whichever channels your audience uses. Also have others within the firm share it via their own personal networks to expand your distribution.
9. Press release. Create a press release and send it out through a host of available outlets. For some great options, see Mequoda’s list of The Best Paid and Free Press Release Sites.
10. Public relations. If your e-book contains original research or offers insights/analysis on current news or trends, pitch it the media.
11. Partnerships. Reach out to associations, influencers, companies and other organizations with similar audiences who may be interested in featuring your e-book. It doesn’t hurt if you mentioned them in your book (for example, you quoted them, asked them to contribute content, included them as resources, etc.) as long as you’re doing it in a way that’s credible and genuine. People like to reciprocate. But regardless of whether there are opportunities to plug each other, remember the cardinal rule is that your content has to be valuable to your partner’s contacts. They don’t want to promote your sales pitch. Show them why their audience would want the information you are providing.
12. Print version. How often do you save an email or download something and then forget about it. There is something to be said for having a piece of paper in front of you to remind you that you wanted to read it or that you did read it and found it interesting. I believe print is still valued especially when it comes to business-oriented content. And I’m not just saying that because I worked in publishing for many years. Well-designed print materials can make content look meatier and more professional. Print versions can help you attract a new lead as well as nurture existing leads by having a physical product to provide to prospects, clients, seminar attendees, and referral sources as a reminder of who you are. Of course, provide them with the electronic version too.
Are you ready to promote your e-book or white paper? You’ve done the hard part of producing great information. Now make the most of it and spread the word.
12 ways to promote your e-book or white paper to bring in leads – Part 1
Articles, blogs, videos, and other content all help to build visibility and credibility. However, often that content isn’t enough to get people to give you their contact information and become a potential prospect. To get that information, you have to offer compelling and distinctive content which your targets feel is worth the downside of giving up their anonymity. We all know that as soon as we handover our email address, we’ll be getting lots of email to add to the overwhelming clutter of our inbox. So when someone does provide that information to us as a business, they typically have more than a passing interest.
Long-form content like an e-book or white paper is a great way to attract attention, showcase your expertise, and very importantly, get individuals to give you their contact information. But you have to get the word out. Here are 12 ways to promote your e-book or white paper:
1. Website. Make sure your content is promoted throughout your site. Include a call-to-action to download or sign-up for the content on all or many of the pages of your website. Create a landing page with enticing marketing copy and a simple sign up form that won’t discourage registration by asking for too much information. Direct people straight to your landing page when you promote the e-book via other channels. Readers don’t want to have to click through a bunch of pages before they get to what they want.
2. Blog. Don’t just announce publication of your e-book in a blog post. You should publish snippets of it to act as teasers. You can do a series of posts with different content. And remember the post doesn’t have to include verbatim text. Create summaries, checklists, FAQs, charts, and case studies based on the e-book.
3. Articles. Write shorter pieces for your own or third-party publications with references to the e-book version.
4. Email. Again don’t just tell people you’ve published an e-book. Give them interesting content derived from the e-book in your email and e-newsletter to entice people to want to download it. Since you already have their contact information, you’re using the content as another way to reinforce and nurture your lead.
5. Paid advertising. If you have done well with Google AdWords in the past, paid search advertising might be useful. Sponsored ads on carefully chosen websites may also be effective. And don’t forget about social media platforms. They offer multiple ways to pay to have your content featured prominently to a broader and/or more selected audience.
6. Direct Mail. Depending on the topic and your audience, a highly targeted direct mail piece may draw people to your site. Direct mail is expensive so think carefully about who your piece is going to and what message will resonate with that audience.
7. Webinar or live event. A related presentation can boost results. Promote the presentation and e-book individually and together. If you did promote them separately and got someone to sign up, then use the other version of the content as a great way to follow up and strengthen the relationship.
In my next post, I’ll cover more tips for promoting your e-book or white paper.
How to find small firm marketing success – Part 2
Want to make the most of your marketing resources? In my last post, I shared 5 takeaways from a LMA small firm marketer roundtable. Here are 5 more tips to help any professional service firm find marketing success.
6. Repurpose all of your content. It can be very challenging to get firm members to write and speak so leverage everything they do. Someone wrote an article? Great, you can promote it as is, but also shorten it and put it out as 1 or more blog posts. Lengthen it or combine it with related content and make it a whitepaper. Turn it into a PowerPoint, webinar or video clips. Create other visuals like charts and infographics to highlight aspects of the article. Then post these different formats on your website as well as push them out via social media and email. That article will now have new life in several different formats and can be promoted over a long period of time to attract more people.
7. Manage expectations. Marketing takes time, effort and money, oftentimes more than partners would like. Writing, speaking, networking, meetings, follow up are a lot of work. And results may not be as dramatic or quick as some in the firm had hoped. That great article, speech, research study may not have brought in clients or gotten tons of press. But marketing isn’t a failure simply because there wasn’t an immediate or significant result. As mentioned in the last post, measure and track results. Look for small, but incremental changes. And realize that it’s seldom one single thing that definitively brings in business. You get clients by consistently making yourself visible and credible in a meaningful way that resonates with your prospects.
8. Share contacts across the firm. At some firms, members are reluctant to share their contacts. Everyone keeps their own, which creates a host of problems as well as limits firm-wide marketing efforts. With no centralized database, you can’t analyze and segment your contacts to better market to them. It may be difficult to monitor email metrics across the firm (opens, clicks, opt-outs, etc.). Individual members may not keep data up-to-date and may not be capturing the same information for each person. Also if something happens to that firm member, what happens to those contacts?
9. Share financial information. As with sharing contacts, the reluctance of firm members to share financial information, such as revenue and profitability, new business sources, etc., is problematic. Whatever the reason for withholding that information among the members, keeping it from marketers and outside consultants, can make it difficult for them to do their jobs. If you want them to advise you on how to grow revenue, they need an accurate picture of the business. Which practice groups are growing or the most profitable? Which members are bringing in the most/least business? The answers to these and other questions help determine priorities and allocation of resources. And when you are a small firm with limited resources you have to make the most of what you do.
10. Hire outside resources when needed and get quality help. Designers, writers, business and marketing consultants, public relations firms, etc. can help you with your marketing even on a small budget. They can take on the burden of certain tasks or introduce a different perspective. They also free up your time so you can focus on what you do best.
Hopefully these 10 tips will help you maximize your own marketing budget. Thanks to the LMA New York Chapter, Small Firm SIG chair and moderator Bruce Segall of Marketing Sense and panelists Michelle Birckhead of Chiesa, Shahinian and Giantomasi, Abby Fairman of Richards Kibbe & Orbe and Alan Levine of Levine Marketing Solutions as well as the other meeting attendees for their great tips.
How to find small firm marketing success – Part 1
Small firms may have fewer resources than larger firms, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be just as innovative, resourceful and successful in their marketing. At a recent Legal Marketing Association event, small firm marketers shared tips and advice on maximizing their marketing efforts. But you don’t need to be a small law firm to take advantage of these ideas. Here are some great takeaways for any professional service firm:
1. Define your unique value proposition. You don’t want to sound like everyone else so make sure you have a clear idea about what you offer clients that differentiates you from competitors. Think about where you have expertise, what are your niches, and where you provide the most value. If you need help, bring in an outside perspective to talk to you and your clients. And once you’ve done that, make sure your branding and content marketing strongly conveys and reinforces your difference.
2. Get internal staff involved. Engage staff and give them opportunities to contribute to your marketing. Of course, not everyone will be happy about the “opportunity.” Public praise is a great motivator as are small gifts. Also offer real benefits to them like learning new skills. Train administrative assistants to manage social media on behalf of members who don’t feel comfortable with it. Pay for classes for someone to learn design skills to help with small tasks.
3. Be smart about how you and others spend time. Prioritize, plan and organize. Create a written marketing plan. Establish an editorial calendar to make sure tasks are assigned and content deadlines are met. Set up procedures to help track and manage marketing activities and projects. But make sure you don’t have too many people involved or have staff with too many other responsibilities. Despite what I said above about leveraging internal staff, marketers should focus on marketing. Other staff should have their defined roles too. But when those last minute requests inevitably come in, you need to get help.
4. Constantly measure marketing results and share data about ROI. Too often firms will continue with specific marketing efforts long after they have ceased working. Sponsoring particular events, advertising in certain publications, and other tactics might have worked once and so the firm is comfortable with it and doesn’t want to stop. The way to combat this is to look at the results. If you sponsor a golf outing every year, but you haven’t gotten a client in years from it, ask yourself whether that money could be better spent elsewhere. If you’re a small firm marketer, present the ROI data to the firm members and then provide a list of alternative ways to spend that money. (Of course, if the firm hasn’t been tracking results at all, then you need to start.)
5. Think creatively about events. Large events aren’t always better. Offer to do events in client offices. Conduct smaller, more frequent, or highly targeted events at the firm. Also explore doing webinars. They are less costly and less time-consuming to produce. The turnaround time is also quicker to take advantage of new developments or hot topics. Virtual events can be a more interesting or engaging way to provide information to clients than the ubiquitous client update.
A small firm budget doesn’t have to mean small results. Plan carefully, try new things, and leverage your existing resources to improve your marketing. In my next blog post, I’ll cover more tips for small firm marketing success.
5 musts for being a thought leader
Your clients and prospects are inundated with information online to help them solve their problems. Some of the information is genuinely educational; most of it though is self-promotional or generic. How do you stand out and get noticed as the one they should turn to for help? One way to break through the clutter is to focus on thought leadership.
What is a thought leader and why do you want to be one? There are lots of definitions, but I like this one from Forbes:
A thought leader is an individual or firm that prospects, clients, referral sources, intermediaries and even competitors recognize as one of the foremost authorities in selected areas of specialization, resulting in its being the go-to individual or organization for said expertise … [and thereby] significantly profit[ing] from being recognized as such.
As the go-to expert, you’re likely to profit in many ways. Regardless of whether it directly brings in new business, thought leadership helps to differentiate you from competitors, expand your reach, and build relationships and trust with your audience. You’re also educating people and promoting deeper and more informative discussions, which is a public service.
That all sounds great, but how can you be a thought leader?
1. Understand your sweet spot. In his book, Epic Content Marketing, Joe Pulizzi defines the sweet spot as “the intersection between your customers’ pain points and where you have the most authority with your stories.” Take the time to really research your audience’s needs and concerns. Then consider what expertise and insights you can offer to help them. Don’t spend time talking about areas where you are not well-informed and don’t have much value to add. Focus on what you know best that can assist your clients.
2. Differentiate your message. Your strongest competitors will be trying to do the same thing you are doing – providing valuable content. Know what they are saying and doing and look for ways to be even better or different. For example, focus on a narrow niche, survey the industry and share research, have an opinion, identify trends, and provide insights. Give specific and actionable strategies taking into account whatever new developments are occurring. The point is to go beyond sending out a typical client alert that sounds just like the ones from every other firm. The Forbes article mentioned above provides a great example, but we’ve all seen examples of thought leadership. We know who is going above and beyond.
3. Have a strategy and goals and align the two. Being a thought leader is a lot of work and you want to be clear about what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and what you hope to get out of it. Seems pretty obvious, but the reality is too many firms start down a path without thinking it through. For example, you have an attorney who happens to be a prolific writer and speaker in a specific area of the law. The problem is that area is not very profitable or high priority for the law firm. How much effort do you want to put behind promoting expertise that isn’t a good fit for the firm? Or maybe the thought leadership is great and would be good for the firm, but it’s not being seen by the right niche audiences. Sometimes firms focus on getting the content piece right, but spend less time making sure the promotion and distribution is getting to their target market. You need to bring both parts together in a strategic way otherwise how are you going to profit from being a thought leader.
4. Write, speak and share information consistently. You can’t be a thought leader if you don’t put your thoughts out there. Write articles, blog posts, whitepapers, and books. Curate and comment on other people’s content. Speak at online and live events. Create video. Use social media. You don’t have to do them all, but put out content in different formats to maximize your reach and appeal to different audiences. And do this regularly. Thought leadership is a long-term strategy. People have to hear from you on a consistent basis. An occasional article or speech isn’t enough, even if it’s really great. Of course, there are lots of ways to repackage that great content to get more life out of it, but make sure you’re doing that. You must be visible on a regular basis.
5. Cultivate relationships with other experts, influencers, industry professionals, and media. As you develop your thought leadership, reach out to other authorities. Gather and share their insights with your audience, make introductions and give referrals, and offer to help them with their content. By assisting others, you’re getting your name out to key contacts in your field, developing deeper relationships, and it’s likely at least some people will reciprocate by helping you. It will also make your thought leadership better informed because you’re incorporating insights from others.
Becoming a thought leader is a long-term commitment and a lot of work. However, successful firms know the investment is worth it in order to not only survive, but thrive against the competition.
